George Newton Pitt

b.15 October 1853 d.22 February 1929
OBE MD Cantab MRCS FRCP(1889)

George Newton Pitt was born in London, the eldest son of George Pitt of Sutton, Surrey. He was educated at Christ’s College, Finchley, and Clare College, Cambridge, where, after being tenth wrangler in 1876, he was elected to a fellowship. He studied medicine at Cambridge, Guy’s Hospital, where he qualified in 1881, and Vienna, and was elected assistant physician to the East London Hospital for Children. At Guy’s he held a number of junior appointments before being appointed assistant physician in 1887, physician in 1897, and lecturer on pathology and on medicine. He retired to the consulting staff in 1913, but served during the 1914-1918 War as a major attached to the 2nd London General Hospital, receiving the O.B.E. for his services. For the last fifteen years of his life he worked with unflagging energy as honorary secretary of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund; and it was his responsibility to administer the War Emergency Fund. He delivered the Goulstonian Lectures in 1890 and the Bradshaw Lecture in 1910, and became Senior Censor of the Royal College of Physicians. He contributed articles to Allbutt’s System of Medicine and Allchin’s Manual of Medicine, diseases of the nervous system and the heart being his principal interests. He was a man of selfless, painstaking industry and of an equable and optimistic temperament that gained him many friends. He married Jane Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Heriot of Harrow Weald, and had two sons and two daughters. He died at Walton-on-Thames.